If you can get your hands on some pork shoulder, you can make these carnitas. Carnitas have always seemed to me like they’d be too complex to make at home – a lot of recipes require boiling in lard, which is something I don’t often do – but these don’t need it at all. Here, all you need is a roasting dish, into which you can put some cubed up pork shoulder with some citrus, aromatics and spices, and then slow roast them all in the oven for three and a half hours. The pork slowly lets off its own fat and stews in it, and about an hour before it’s done roasting, fills the house with the glorious smell of braising pork, garlic, orange, cinnamon, and onion.

All that’s left to do is strain off most of the liquid, shred up the meat, and broil it for about ten minutes so that it gets crispy and charred on top but stays tender and juicy on the inside. Then into the tacos it goes, showered with some chopped white onion, cilantro, and hot sauce on top. It’s really a beautiful thing.

So if you’re stuck inside at home on a chilly weekend, you can at least be stuck inside with slow roasting homemade carnitas. Because these are incredibly easy to make, and all it takes is a little time. I was amazed that something that tasted so complex could come out of my own kitchen.

There’s an Indian restaurant in Scottsdale, Arizona called Jewel of the Crown. I grew up a few miles away from it, but it was slightly too fancy to go there on a regular basis. Mostly, we would go when family was visiting from out of town – it was a special occasion. And for the kid version of me, it was a very special occasion. I took to it immediately, even when I was young: the chicken was perfectly cooked, the naan bread was devoured in minutes.

But my favorite thing came piping hot from a tap: chai lattes. Milky, subtle but present spices, and delicious black tea. It took everything in me not to finish it in one sip. I coveted these chai lattes and thought about them months after eating at the restaurant. I’d try chai lattes elsewhere, but they weren’t the same – they tasted pretty much like watery syrup with some milk mixed in.

I haven’t been to the restaurant in at least 10 years and here I am, still thinking about those perfect chais.

But here I am with a chai latte recipe that tastes just like those perfect ones. I am so glad I finally tried it. If you’ve only ever had chai lattes from The Great Big Coffee Chain That Shall Not Be Named, you really, really should try making these. And it’s not even too hard to make in the comfort of your own saucepan: if you can get your hands on green cardamom pods (I found them easily at Penzey’s) and some star anise (in most grocery stores), everything else comes together in minutes.

This year the beginning of September and Labor Day happened to coincide with the temperatures dropping a good 20 degrees here in the DC area. It’s been close to 90 (and humid) most of summer, but the past few days its been more like low to mid 70s, and all of this combined means people are going crazy getting excited for fall.

Even I’m a little excited for fall, which is always a surprise for me because I start to shiver around 55 degrees. But around here we probably have at least two months before we have to endure temperatures below freezing, and for that I am happy. I can get behind some good pumpkin spice, squash, apple pastries and boots. And beautiful fall colors… yeah, okay, I’ll begrudgingly admit it: I like fall. Now I just need to get through what I’m sure will come next: the typical DC Indian summer.

In any case, I’m much more interested in cooking and baking now that the temperatures have fallen a little. I’ve been trying to find more recipes with tahini in them – I absolutely love it, and I find it to be the best alternative to peanut butter. Cashew and almond butter are way too different from peanut flavor-wise, but sesame packs a similar punch. I love it in sauces (like these fantastic otsu noodles or mixed with yogurt for these pita sandwiches), and of course in classic hummus.

But I also love tahini in sweets – enter: tahini cookies.

These tahini cookies are reminiscent of peanut butter cookies, and also of chocolate covered halvah. They are nutty and sweet, with a hearty amount of chocolate chips inside (if you prefer a less chocolatey cookie, you could cut the amount of chips in half). The sprinkling of salt on top is perfect with the decadent cookie below it. And you probably have all the ingredients in your house already (unless you need to get your hands on some tahini).

The cookie dough does require at least 12 hours to chill – so plan ahead! I promise it is worth it though.

I took a vacation about a month ago, and it seemed to extend until around now. Summer vacation has a tendency to do that, it seems – and in the office where I work, it’s only reinforced, because at any given time there are 20% of my coworkers on vacation between the months of May and September. So the overall feeling of vacation hangs around, even long after my own is over. I’m definitely not complaining – I’d extend summer throughout the whole year if I could.

I finally feel like I’m getting back to a sort of normal routine, though, and with that I am able to cook more regularly again. I’d had this recipe bookmarked for a couple weeks and finally got around to making it yesterday. It’s as simple as can be, and was easy enough for a weeknight where I was sleep-deprived and couldn’t bother with anything complex. You just toss some (good quality) canned tomatoes into a large baking dish, and throw in a handful garlic cloves, a teeny bit of anchovy, and butter to help it along. It roasts for just 35-40 minutes, bubbling away and reducing to a luscious sauce that you can pour over any pasta you’d like. With minimal chopping required, it’s almost as easy as just opening a jar of sauce, and it certainly tastes a whole lot more unique.

I write to you from Tucson, Arizona, where it is now “only” 99 degrees Fahrenheit outside, cooling down from what was likely a balmy high of 104. I’m here visiting family and taking in the general gestalt of the desert, where I lived for 18 years as a kid, but somehow appreciate so much more now. You don’t get sunsets and golden light like here anywhere else. And after marathoning Breaking Bad for the last few weeks (I know I’m late to the party, but yeah, it’s good), the desert seems even more cinematic, driving down the highway at 80 miles an hour with nothing but mountains, dust, and cacti on either side.

In any case, summer is felt loud and clear around these parts, and in summer I love these kinds of salads that can be a light dinner, a whole dinner, a lunch, an appetizer… and be as delicious cold as it is warm. This particular quinoa salad has a fantastic flavor, probably owing a lot to the fresh flavors of the corn, lemon and mint that play perfectly off the deep background flavor of butter and a hint of honey. And the fresh mint leaves throughout make the whole thing come together and sing. I devoured this warm for dinner, then ate it the next two days for work lunches, just cold out of the fridge. I probably don’t have to tell you that it would be a great potluck meal or side dish to bring too, and very easy to make a day ahead.

I hope everyone out there (at least those of you in the Northern hemisphere) are having a lovely summer so far, full of fresh foods and longer relaxing days. Do you have an all-time favorite summer salad?

Recipes have failed in my realm lately, guys. Almond butter chocolate chunk cookies that came out too oaty and chewy, despite using an entire jar of (expensive!) almond butter in them. Dark chocolate amaretto cookies that looked so good in the recipe I was using, but came out weirdly acidic and bitter (the magic must have been lost in translation, literally – I was using Google to translate the recipe from Lithuanian). I only have so much time and money to bake with, and it’s just sad when things don’t taste great. My search for Amaretto recipes lives on though, since I’ve got to do something with the bottle of it I bought for my lemon cakes recipe months ago. I will keep you updated with any future successes.

So today I’m turning to this buttermilk biscuit recipe, which I’ve made twice and both times to great, great success. The biscuits are called “Touch of Grace biscuits,” which is the perfect name to describe how airy and light these biscuits are. Don’t get me wrong, they are immensely buttery and creamy, but they crumble perfectly and don’t feel dense at all. Southern self-rising flour is a key ingredient, which I previously hadn’t heard of, but was easy to locate in Whole Foods.

The biscuits are from Shirley Corriher’s Cookwise. I heard about them from Molly Wizenberg, as I do many of my favorite recipes. I was listening to Molly and Matthew Amster-Burton’s terrific podcast Spilled Milk and when Molly described these biscuits, I had to go out, get myself some Southern self-rising flour, and make them that same weekend. We ate them hot right out of the pan, and they still were good hours later at room temperature. They were good enough that I even took a tupperware full of them to my boyfriend’s parents and they loved them, which is always a good way to win brownie-points (biscuit-points?).

I’ve been trying to get better at doing things on the weekends, a far cry from my high school and college days when every break from school meant doing nothing at all. Now that I’m older and wiser more anxious, I always feel like 2 days for a weekend is just never enough and how could I possibly maximize the precious time I have, and oh no it’s already Sunday again!? Even though my social life isn’t exactly overflowing, I still manage to feel like there’s not enough time to do all the reading, cooking, going for long walks, watching tv or movies, hanging out with Dan – not to mention chores, grocery shopping, and other stuff shopping. It’s even worse in summer, because there’s so many things you always *could* be doing (like this weekend the DC Pride Parade is down in Dupont and we didn’t go to check it out, womp womp).

In any case, cooking and grocery shopping are two things that are an absolute necessity, and I love to make at least one sweet and one savory thing each weekend. A few weeks ago I came across these lemon mascarpone cookies and I knew I had to procure some mascarpone as soon as I could.

These lemon mascarpone cookies are full of bright lemon zest and creamy, slightly tart mascarpone; they’re soft and a little crumbly, not tough in the slightest. I think they are as refreshing as a cookie can be. You can make them even smaller than I did here so that they’re basically bite-size, or make them a little bigger for a more traditional-sized cookie. Either way, they are the perfect simple dessert for those hot days that are certainly coming soon.

The first time I had caprese, it was in a salad. Not the traditional caprese salad you may be thinking of – which is just sliced tomatoes, basil and mozzarella laying together in harmony, perfect as they are – but instead a big pile of salad greens with fresh basil leaves throughout, topped with cut tomatoes, fresh mozzarella balls, and a balsamic vinaigrette. Needless to say, it was incredibly good, so good that I often ordered in lieu of pizza at that restaurant (gasp). It has since been my go-to whenever I’m asked to bring an appetizer to a potluck – it’s hard to mess up.

And in the warm months, it’s hard to imagine a better thing to eat. Basil and tomatoes are at their freshest and if you’re lucky enough to have a garden, you can just go grab handfuls of both right outside. It is a big, bold, underlined item on my Life Goals list to have a garden of my own, and when I do, it will be required to house many bunches of my beloved basil.

Here, we’ve got another slight variation on the tomato, mozz, basil holy trinity: toss ’em with pasta. This caprese pasta salad has a twist, too: the tomatoes are quickly roasted in olive oil and garlic until they blister and soften in the oven, taking away any bitterness and replacing it with earthy sweetness. I had a hard time not plucking them all off of the pan and eating them before assembling the pasta. The roasted tomatoes get tossed with whatever pasta you like, ribbons of basil, and mozzarella in a bright vinaigrette. It’s equally good cold, room temperature, or warm, which makes it a great take-along meal for potlucks, parties, or just your desk at work.

Do you like to travel light, in minimalist fashion, and not gather too many possessions to your name? Or do you happily collect and squirrel away your belongings? I always have been in the former camp, never wanting to have too much stuff so that when I inevitably move (as I have ~8 times in the past 10 years), I don’t have too many heavy things to carry. No furniture. Not too many heavy books. I donate big bags of clothes at least three times a year.

My boyfriend is firmly in the latter category, especially when it comes to his books – he has hundreds, and wouldn’t dream of getting rid of a single one. It makes me anxious just looking at them, thinking of how much weight and effort it will be during our next move. But they keep on coming, and we keep getting more bookshelves to accommodate them. We recently maxed out the two bookcases we had, so it was time to go to the Mecca for Twentysomething, Non-Rich Couples: Ikea!

We made the 40-minute trek there yesterday, to get our 3rd bookshelf. We do not have a couch yet, a TV, or any real living room furnishings to speak of, but the books, they have a home. I did make the crucial purchase of a $7 string of lights to drape around our back door, in a side of the room that normally is dark and unwelcoming. I love the glowy little lights and along with the bookshelves, we at least have an interesting living room, if not a furnished one. Baby steps, right? One day we will feel like real live adults with a proper home! (Right?)

One thing we never skimp on is food. I tell myself that I’m allowed to spend a little more money on luxuries like prosciutto or the more expensive brand of olive oil, because I save so much money by never going out to bars and clubs, like most 25-year-olds do. I can especially forgive expensive prosciutto when it’s paired with such simple things as asparagus and pickled shallots here, which come together to make a unique and non-fussy side dish (or dinner, when I accidentally eat a huge lunch earlier in the day).

This simple recipe comes together in no time and is great for late spring. The pickled shallots alone are worth the recipe, but I’m just biased because I love pickled anything.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Then in a large bowl, mix together the flour, the baking soda, the baking powder, and the salt.

In another large bowl, beat together the butter and the peanut butter until they are fully mixed and begin to be fluffy. Add in the sugar and brown sugar and mix together until fully combined. Then add the egg, and mix until fully incorporated. Then add the milk and vanilla extract and mix until combined. Add the flour mixture and mix until just combined, and then stir in the peanut butter and chocolate chips.

Place sprinkling sugar (about 1 tablespoon of sugar) on a plate. Drop the cookie dough by rounded teaspoonfuls into the sugar,and then put them on ungreased cookie sheets. Allow space in between the cookies. Then use a fork to flatten each cookie, making a crossed pattern on top, but leave each cookie still slightly rounded. Bake cookies for 10-12 minutes. Try not to overbake them - they may still look a little underdone when you pull them out but they will firm up after taking them out of the oven.

Allow them to cool a bit on their baking sheets and then move them to a cooling rack to fully cool down.

It has been nothing but rain, rain, rain here for the past, oh, 2 weeks. Honestly, it hasn’t been bothering me much – as long as it’s not cold outside, I don’t mind the rain. It feels refreshing and maybe being from Arizona makes me appreciate it more. I know when summer hits and we are all outside in the blazing sun we will be wishing for weather like this!

The rain does mean more staying inside though, and staying inside often makes me want to cook and bake. I actually made these chocolate chip peanut butter cookies a while back, but have been waiting to share them here.